Artfactories

The association "Autresparts", set up in September 2000, is a think-tank bringing together cultural actors and researchers on the relationship between art, territory and society. It merged in November 2007 with the Artfactories association, an European resource center on brownfields transformed into artistic spaces.

A Crisis in Urban Creativity? Reflections on the Cultural Impacts of Globalisation, and on the Potential of Urban Cultural Policies by Dr. Franco Bianchini

Paper presented at the international symposium The Age of the City: the Challenges for Creative Cites, Osaka, February 7th-10th 2004

The work in progress presented at this symposium considers some aspects of the cultural impacts of globalisation (1) on contemporary Western European cities, and some of their implications for urban creativity. It concentrates on trends which have the potential of undermining the conditions for urban creativity. These include the following: the dispersal of urban functions and the problem of the ‘hypertrophic’ city; the emergence of ‘non-places’ and of the ‘experience economy’; the reduction in leisure time for people in work; the consequences of ’information overload’ and of the ’audit explosion’, particularly for public sector organisations. The paper then considers the creative potential of a further trend: the increasingly multi-ethnic and multi-cultural composition of cities in the UK and other European countries. The concluding sections of the paper discuss aspects of the potential of urban cultural policies in counteracting an emerging crisis in urban creativity and innovation.